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Farming
This is a guide solely concerned with farming. Remember, though, that successful players must always ask themselves, "what gives more profit?" Your answer will vary depending on your area and how far along you are in the round. In Imperion, like farming in real life, it requires a lot of work. To pursue a life cultivating greenery, first you have to make the proper preparations. Before even registering, there are several things you should do. Lets think about it! * Make sure you have the time. The profit of farming scales with activity; an account which is active 24/7 will make more profit than one active 12/5. * Make sure you have the proper mindset. Make no mistake--you are going to be profiting by screwing over the hard work of everyone around you. If this doesn't appeal to you, go another direction. * Plan for the future. Titan farming is almost impossible, so that's out. Picking between Terrans and Xen is really a choice of activity and play style. Terrans are easier to play, but have a smaller payout; Xen are extremely difficult and time-consuming to play well, but if you do play them well your rewards are great. So. Now that you've got the proper mindset, timeframe, and race, let's get started. After registration, look around your area before doing quests. What does the area look like--are there a lot of players around you? Do they appear active? What race are they? If you have appeared in a barren wasteland, it might be best to delete and restart. As for races, Terrans are the best for farming, followed by Xen and then Titans as a very distant third. We'll be getting into race theory shortly. Do the Quests Do the quests, and pick Engineering. Terrans can, alternatively, choose Military Space flight, but it's still a gamble and I would counsel against gambling that much this early. You could be stuck for days with nothing to do. At the next decision, pick "smoke and mirrors"--the one that has you build a cache. The choices here are simple, and applicable to everyone regardless of playing style. Picking either Civilian Space or Planetary Defense leaves you with ships/artillery out ripe for the picking, and once those are gone, you're done for. Make no mistake--though a lot of noobs think it's cool to get a couple of defense systems, these artillery will do nothing when the hordes come knocking. On the contrary, a cache cannot be destroyed this early in, before anyone has bombers. If you picked engineering: Next priority should be getting offensive ships. As soon as you are able to, switch your Development Center focus to Military Space. Keep leveling the Dev. Center as soon as you are able to--with the income from your mines, that shouldn't be too long. You can also upgrade your mines if you wish. When doing this, look at the costs for your race's raider in the wiki. Xnair, as you can see, cost no crystal, while Fighters cost mostly metal and not much Deuterium. Level your mines accordingly. Once you get raiding, you'll be too busy to upgrade them any more, so do it right the first time. If you picked military space: Lets assume it will let you get Xnair or Fighter right away. If that's the case, proceed immediately to below. As soon as you can get raiders, hit an inactive near you. Inactives are usually characterized by low pop. and names like P89349283, meaning they have not done the "name your planet" quest. If you're lucky, you'll hit these before anyone else. If not, they'll still provide a steady stream of income while you get more forces. Be aware that inactives don't provide many resources after the first hit. On the other hand, each new player is a potentially lucrative farm. Resources from raiding should go to these things, in this order: * More ships * Fleet Base level * Shipyard (Bioreactor for Xen) * Development Center * Stockyards (as needed) * Trade center (as needed) * other stuff There shouldn't be much other stuff. Raiding Theory The key to raiding is efficiency. For example, you wouldn't send a series of small raids against an active player--you would send a big hit, to clear out his defenses, then small raids to suck away his resources. Smaller parties are generally better; if a small raiding party comes back full, you send a larger one. However, you must balance this with fleet slots--it does you no good to have 50 ships sitting at home while your small raids are out. While on that topic, it is always bad to have ships sitting at home for any length of time. Your enemies will be looking for them, and you will be looking for theirs. Catching someone's fleets at home is a twofold boon--you've just created a new farm and eliminated competition in one swoop. The converse of this, of course, is fuel consumption. If you know sending 20 extra fighters won't net you any more resources, it's best to leave them and search for a new target. Rule of thumb: whenever you have all fleet slots used and ships sitting at home, time to upgrade the fleet base. Whenever you have slots not being used, time to upgrade the shipyard/biocreator. On hangars: yes, a farmer should have a hanger, despite his ships never being at home. While your farms worships the hangar, farmers should make sure they keep a hanger for those emergency situations. Making New Farms As mentioned earlier, it's best to hit a prospective farm with a huge clearing wave, then small raids subsequently. One good method for this is nightime raiding. As stated earlier, you don't want to have ships sitting at home. But we must sleep! True. So, before you sleep, send all of your ships out against a single target a ways away. You get the dual benefit of making a new farm and avoiding unpleasant fleet destruction. Managing Your Farms This is a little different for each farmer, but in essence it's the same. KEEP A LIST. Excel is wonderful for this, because you can keep columns for name, location, distance, last raid, average profit, etc. As you progress, some farms will start building caches and preventing you from getting anything; this is okay. Remove them from the list of farms and make a note to bomb them later. Some farms will start vainly producing handfuls of defense, and this is excellent. Send in your fleets and eat them up, then use cyclers on the ensuing debris field. I once had a farm who never gave me any spoils, but I could always count on a defense system or two that I could destroy and thus get his resources in a more indirect way. Some farms will send you threatening messages. Many players find these immensely amusing and read them avidly ("farm mail", they're called, a play on "fan mail"). If that's not your thing, just read then delete. Some farms will give several tactics to try and get you to stop farming them: * "Tough Guy": I'll get big then kill you. * "Nuisance": You're not getting much from me, why bother. * "Bluffer": I'll get my big alliance which I'm not in yet/friend on the top 10 charts to attack you if you don't stop! * "Kumbaya": Hey let's have peace. Ignore all of these. Or answer them with more raids, your call. Competition, Harvesting, and Territory Sometimes, you'll get other farmers in your area. It is almost always in your benefit to take them out quickly. Sharing farms with someone is not a pleasant experience. Besides, they'll probably have noticed you as well, and will be gunning for you just as much. Best way to take out a fellow farmer is to catch his troops at home. Try hitting him in the early morning either US time or German time or both. If you're lucky, you'll catch his troops and that will be that. Now, there will be many people who have recyclers and will be harvesting comets in that area. You'll want to get a few eventually and do the same. However, you have an edge: whereas they just have to hope they get to the comet, harvest it, and get out without being bumped, you have ships with guns. If you find people are being especially annoying with recyclers, start sending escorts with your fleets. If someone wipes your escort, start spiking comets: picking one juicy-looking comet and sending a huge fleet with a few recyclers to harvest it. Your 5x7 (the area you can initially see when you open the map) should be yours, bar none. Kill any who venture into it, and keep everyone in it down. Outside of that, you should be somewhat more circumspect. Fuel costs begin to get horrid farther out, plus you run the risk of entering someone else's territory and provoking a border war. Look carefully at a target before hitting it, and only do so if you are fairly certain you'll get a good yield. Closing Notes As your farming progresses, your farm list should become both bigger and more productive, as you drop unproductive farms and add new ones. By the time you have a level 20 fleet base, you should have a regular rotation of farms to hit, and a great income from these. You should have no competition in your immediate area, and should be the bane of all simmers nearby. Everyone outside your 5x7 should be keeping a wary eye on you. With a resource income like this, you can go any number of directions--colonization, spies, rushing for early bombers...your options are nearly limitless. Good hunting. Note: Another note on hangars: These will be the bane of your existence. The best way to counter a hangar, short of bombers, is spies. Spy them constantly and wait until they get careless, then whack whatever they have out and eat up the debris. You should keep them cowering in fear until you get bombers and glass their planet. For the original post on this guide go to the forum: Farming Category:Offense Category:Game play